Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet, regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer, with a murderous temper.They have been uneasy rivals since childhood.Then one day George's loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life. In May We Be Forgiven, Homes gives us a darkly comic look at 21st century domestic life - at individual lives spiraling out of control, bound together by family and history.The cast of characters experience adultery, accidents, divorce, and death. But this is also a savage and dizzyingly inventive vision of contemporary America, whose dark heart Homes penetrates like no other writer - the strange jargons of its language, its passive aggressive institutions, its inhabitants' desperate craving for intimacy and their pushing it away with litigation, technology, paranoia. At the novel's heart are the spaces in between, where the modern family comes together to re-form itself. May We Be Forgiven explores contemporary orphans losing and finding themselves anew; and it speaks above all to the power of personal transformation - simultaneously terrifying and inspiring.
May We Be Forgiven
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AM Homes is a masterful dissector of modern American life. She excels in portraying the minutiae of a dysfunctional family (is there any other kind?), creating characters who are both repellent and magnetic. Her writing exerts a push-pull that feels like being in a hall of mirrors. You want to run away but you find yourself compelled to look at the reflection ... AM Homes can't really be compared to any other writer; no one else is quite as dark and funny and elegant all at the same time. May We Be Forgiven has the narrative intensity of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and the emotional punch of Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved, all told through the eyes of Larry David. It's the best thing I've read this year. --Observer
A wonderful, wild, heartbreaking, hilarious and astonishing novel ... Homes is a very, very funny writer, brilliant at pinpointing the ridiculous nature of 21st-century living ... This is a piercing, perceptive and deeply funny novel about the nature of life, and about finding your family wherever you can, wherever you get comfort and something approaching love. --Independent on Sunday
She is one of the funniest writers laugh-out-loud funny. The internet dating scenes in her new novel include vengeful children making their own use of their mom s SM handcuffs. She has a deadpan understated humour that builds line by line into comic intent. Her humour is often overlooked by reviewers perhaps because women aren t supposed to be funny. --Jeanette Winterson, Guardian
This novel starts at maximum force - and then it really gets going. I can't remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing. --Salman Rushie
To call May We Be Forgiven "compelling" would be an understatement; it is a novel as compulsive as its characters. --Financial Times
A wonderful, wild, heartbreaking, hilarious and astonishing novel ... Homes is a very, very funny writer, brilliant at pinpointing the ridiculous nature of 21st-century living ... This is a piercing, perceptive and deeply funny novel about the nature of life, and about finding your family wherever you can, wherever you get comfort and something approaching love. --Independent on Sunday
She is one of the funniest writers laugh-out-loud funny. The internet dating scenes in her new novel include vengeful children making their own use of their mom s SM handcuffs. She has a deadpan understated humour that builds line by line into comic intent. Her humour is often overlooked by reviewers perhaps because women aren t supposed to be funny. --Jeanette Winterson, Guardian
This novel starts at maximum force - and then it really gets going. I can't remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing. --Salman Rushie
To call May We Be Forgiven "compelling" would be an understatement; it is a novel as compulsive as its characters. --Financial Times
About the Author
A. M. HOMES is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers and Jack, two collections of short stories, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects and the highly acclaimed memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, as well as the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and the Castle on the Hill. She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and writes frequently on arts and culture for numerous magazines and newspapers. She is currently writing for a new major US TV Series. She lives in New York City.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By Sue Kichenside
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
An outstanding year for new literary fiction culminates for me in a book of quite astonishing bravery, audacity and hilariously grim satire. Can this really be the state of the middle-class nuclear family in the US today? A. M. Homes seems to be saying that it is. This book is a disturbing read; it is definitely not for the faint-hearted. But it is definitely for anyone who appreciates razor-sharp writing.
Briefly, it is the story of two brothers: Harold, the narrator, and George, just eleven months younger. George is a thoroughly nasty piece of work and now he has lost his mind. A trail of devastating events leaves mild-mannered, college lecturer Harold to pick up the pieces. Will he be able to cope? Will he ever finish his book on Richard Milhous Nixon? And why, you may ask, is he writing a book about a discredited dead ex-President whom none of his students remember? Factor in a couple of disturbed children (excellent characters, these), internet dating with some fairly grubby sex and a legal system that seems unacquainted with the term `justice', and you have an unflinching indictment of middle-class America in the early years of the 21st century. Read it and weep.
But you will also laugh because it is very funny. Even funnier, perhaps, for Jewish readers. Towards the end of the book there is a noticeable mellowing and when the family travels to a tiny village in South Africa to celebrate Harold's nephew Nate's Bar Mitzvah, Homes reveals that she can do tenderness and optimism too.
What makes A. M. Homes such an interesting writer is that she does not fit neatly into any particular pigeon-hole and she knows how to nail her targets with needle-sharp precision. Devastating.
Briefly, it is the story of two brothers: Harold, the narrator, and George, just eleven months younger. George is a thoroughly nasty piece of work and now he has lost his mind. A trail of devastating events leaves mild-mannered, college lecturer Harold to pick up the pieces. Will he be able to cope? Will he ever finish his book on Richard Milhous Nixon? And why, you may ask, is he writing a book about a discredited dead ex-President whom none of his students remember? Factor in a couple of disturbed children (excellent characters, these), internet dating with some fairly grubby sex and a legal system that seems unacquainted with the term `justice', and you have an unflinching indictment of middle-class America in the early years of the 21st century. Read it and weep.
But you will also laugh because it is very funny. Even funnier, perhaps, for Jewish readers. Towards the end of the book there is a noticeable mellowing and when the family travels to a tiny village in South Africa to celebrate Harold's nephew Nate's Bar Mitzvah, Homes reveals that she can do tenderness and optimism too.
What makes A. M. Homes such an interesting writer is that she does not fit neatly into any particular pigeon-hole and she knows how to nail her targets with needle-sharp precision. Devastating.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By sue
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
considering the disaster that begins this tale, I warmed to the main character and the humour of the writing> I would read more of this author
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Kate
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has a great story, beautifully written characters and a dark humour. I have read it in a couple of days and cannot wait to read more by this excellent author.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Franzen-like, dark at times but still funny
I was reminded throughout of Jonathan Franzen's style and themes - long, sprawling family dramas, with dark humour and families coping with their problems. Read more
Published 5 hours ago by K. J. Noyes
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dull and smug
I really struggled with this book. It was clearly the sort of dark humour that you either enjoy or don't. Well, I just found it hard going and desperately dull. Read more
Published 5 days ago by random_customer
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very enjoyable read.
Very interesting read. Grew to like the storyteller immensely. A slightly strange almost detached style of writing but quite addictive to read.
Published 17 days ago by Jack Spratt
3.0 out of 5 stars
started well but got bored
As you would expect of an orange prize shortlisted book this was well written. It began well but as this childless separated man began to take in children and give them a great... Read more
Published 17 days ago by Esther
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quite mad but totally delightful
You are thrown head first into the goings on of this SUPER dysfunctional family. Each time you put the book down you wonder how soon until you can pick it up again. Read more
Published 21 days ago by Sarah Smart
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly beautiful to read
The best book I have read so far in 2013, it was full of surprises and it was beautifully written.
Published 26 days ago by cathrine Gnanapragasam
5.0 out of 5 stars
May we be forgive
A wild ride, over the course of a year. Madly violent, crazily sexual but also touching and tender. An amazingly enjoyable, engaging and funny story.
Published 28 days ago by tina price
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forceful Forgiven
This is a real roller-coaster of a read. Once you start you can't stop or at times even keep up with the brilliant writing of Ms Homes. Read more
Published 1 month ago by nickyb
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark and biting satire - if you "forgive" the less realistic elements
"May We Be Forgiven" is not an easy book to summarise. The book is narrated by Harold, a fairly pedestrian academic teacher and aspiring writer of history and particularly the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Ripple
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astonishing stuff
It's oft called a rollercoaster but I dislike that description, it was applied to 70s thriller movies and modern CGI infested 3D kids films etc. Read more
Published 2 months ago by M. Whittam
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